If Emory was gonna be stupid and get herself hitched, then we were at least gonna give her one last hurrah. Every woman deserves a bachelorette party that makes her wonder if she even wants to jump the broom at all.
It was prom weekend, so even more reason to take Emory somewhere far away. If she was gonna refuse to do things the rest of us wished we’d gotten the chance to do, swaying with somebody cross-eyed in a poorly lit auditorium with no bump standing between you and them, then she was gonna have herself a grown-up weekend. And what was more grown than a bachelorette?
At first, when we told Emory we wanted to do something fun on prom night if she wasn’t gonna go, she said no. Resisted and resisted until finally she gave in after Adela went on begging up a mountain. Emory couldn’t say no to Adela and we all knew it.
The bachelorette party was gonna be the first time we were all back together since the biting incident, everyone except the youngest Girls and the kids. We left the kids, all of them except Kai ’cause Jayden was happy to have more time with him, with April and Jamilah and one big tent set up by the dune lake for the night.
We drove for about two and a half hours, and I kept having to shout back to Adela and ask her if I was really going the right way. She’d peek at the directions on her phone, careful not to let none of the other Girls see, and then tell me, “Yep. Just keep going.”
So I kept on. On and on and on, till finally Adela yelled, “Turn left up here,” and I whipped left, sending them skidding in the truck bed.
I watched what had been open Florida, or maybe Georgia, or possibly even Alabama—there was no distinction out here—collide with rural thick bush and marsh, bayous and air that drenches, borders having no stake in this mess of land. There wasn’t even no separation between truck and sky and body out here, driving beneath a sky ceiling in a tangle of trees.
I slowed down as the road beneath me became dirt and then, finally, Adela told me, “Stop, right over there.”
The truck rolled into a clearing in the middle of the forest, and I could hear music faint and floating through the trees. I parked beside other cars, but there was no people, no clear path to where the music was coming from or what would be beyond the curtain of trees.
I hopped outta the front seat and even though I was starting to think this was a bad idea, starting to consume myself with thoughts of Luck and Lion at home with two fifteen-year-old girls who took every opportunity they had to make out, I couldn’t let the other Girls see me panic. I clapped my hands together and held my hand out to Emory in the truck bed. She took it and hopped down.
“Where are we? If this is some weird forest prom, I’m not going any farther. I told you, I don’t wanna go to prom—”
“It’s not prom,” Adela said. She was beaming, her and her full-term belly looking like she’d won an award. “It’s…” Adela looked to me like it was our little secret. “Your bachelorette party!”
“What? No, I don’t—”
Before Emory could protest, Crystal was placing a little plastic crown over Emory’s grown-out roots, and Tori was shimmying a little red dress on over her tank top. Emory groaned but allowed us to fawn over her, all of us talking about how she was about to have the best night of her life and to not let us forget to give her our surprise, and then Adela was stuffing everyone’s phones into her big old tote bag and we were pulling Emory through the forest curtain, in the direction Adela claimed we had to go.
I felt the solid ground morph to mud and weeds as we went deeper into the trees and the only thing that kept us knowing where we was going was the hollers ahead of us and the excitement Adela radiated.
The shack came into view suddenly and without warning. It looked like it was about to collapse from the roof, country people spilling out, the outcasted South swarming around the wooden structure.
I’d never seen nothing like it. At first, we thought maybe we could just find some kind of girls’ club, but nothing seemed right when we looked it up, and then I remembered Pops’s cousin Randall. Randall was a little funny, that’s what Pops always said, and he used to go up farther south to some hidden bar where him and all the other funny people went.
I called him up and asked him where to go. Randall didn’t wanna tell me, thought I was gonna rat it out or something, but then I explained to him I had a friend who needed to see that she could be the way she was and have some fun while doing it, and so he gave me the address and I sent it to Adela and she mapped out a way to get there. Still, I was pretty sure it was gonna be low-key, maybe even near empty, just a stereo and some sad barstools and a few folks who didn’t have no place else to go.
But this was something else entirely.
The shack was in the middle of thick woods, adorned in dirt and lanterns, large amps releasing a raucous beat into the night, dozens of folks rubbing up on each other on the dance floor, girls grazing in the sweet soft napes of other girls, men twirling each other till they dizzied, all kinds of bodies moving wild, letting their sleeves flutter and fall, letting themselves dance.
By the time we reached the shack, folks was pushing drinks into our hands, strangers grabbing onto our waists to pull us through the front door or into the crowd.
I thought the heat was suffocating when I first got out the truck, but inside the shack it was so much worse. Someone handed me a cup before I could even see the face attached to the hand, and I took a sip. I’d never tasted nothing like it. The liquor took you over and compelled you to reenter the swamp and release your hips in winding circles among all the freed.
But before I could return to join the parade of dancers outside, Adela grabbed my hand and pulled me and Emory to a table in the corner, both Tori and Crystal already lost to the dance floor, and when we sat down, food arrived in seconds, all kinds of bone and meat, even though none of us had ordered and it wasn’t clear if there was even a kitchen in the place. I smelled smoke, though, and knew whatever we was about to eat had been roasting all day, slow and hot over a handmade fire.
“What is this?” Emory asked, pointing to the food, to the whole place. She looked scared as a squirrel in the street.
I laughed, taking a bite of the food and then stuffing it in my mouth. “Why you gotta question it? It’s not gonna hurt you.”
Emory whispered in a growl, “I thought this was my bachelorette party. Why would you bring me here?”
Adela rubbed her belly and smiled. “We wanted you to know it’s okay, Emory.” She lowered her voice. “I know I couldn’t return your…feelings, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t. Where I come from, there are plenty of people who—”
“I don’t have feelings,” Emory spit. “I have a son. And a man who wants to marry me at home and now I’m stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere at some dyke bar. Next time, kidnap April and Jamilah. Not me.”
Emory stood up and stormed out of the shack. Adela and I sat facing each other, her face fallen, her spark gone.
“It’s fine,” I told her. “She just needs a little time.”
Adela and I kept eating, avoiding any talk of Tooth, and eventually Crystal and Tori came inside, panting like they’d just exited a marathon of sweat, and we got brought a whole other foil platter of food. Eventually somebody came up asking us to pay and I was ready to dish out at least twenty bucks for all that food, but they said, “Pay what you can, honey,” and so Adela reached into her big bag and pulled out forty dollars and handed it over.
Some folks came over and joined our table and even though they never told us their names or where they was from, we spent an hour talking and cackling about some crazy lady named Stella and how she shot a peacock and that’s how the bar got started. Eventually, when the liquor’s haze faded enough, I remembered why we was there. Emory.
I stood and wove through the shack, stepping out back to where the dance party was still raving. And that’s when I saw her.
Emory was in the center of the crowd, where people chanted and clapped and writhed, and she was facing somebody with a knotted puff of orange hair, their noses nearly touching as they rolled in time with each other, in sync with some rhythm not coming from the speakers, and I watched Emory smile and lean forward and kiss the girl and I watched the girl kiss her back, wrap her hand around the back of Emory’s neck, and pull her closer.
It wasn’t that I was happy Emory was stepping out on my brother, but I was satisfied to know I was right. That if she married him, she would always be on the edge of finding her lips on another’s, seeing a girl and filling to the brim with regret. And that wasn’t good for neither of ’em.
Emory and the girl separated and she did that familiar thing I’d watch her do every time she stared too long at Adela: glance around at anybody who might’ve seen, just to be sure, and when her eyes found mine, they bowed in shame and she peeled apart from the girl and disappeared through the crowd in the other direction.
I ran into the crowd and pushed through, following in the direction Emory had gone, and when I came out the other side, I saw her blond hair disappear down a hill.
I followed the trickle of water and found Emory settled beneath a cluster of willows, the swamp only a few feet away, her knees to her chest. I climbed down to the spot beside Emory and sat, realizing too late that the ground was wet and muddy and now soaking the back of my shorts.
Then Emory turned to look at me, eyelashes clumping together with sweat or tears or both, her face crooked and red.
“It’s okay, Em. Jayden might be hurt at first, but he’s gonna get over it once he realizes—”
“I’m not telling Jay about any of this. I’m marrying him in two weeks, Simone.”
I scoffed. “You can’t still marry him after this.”
“Yes, I can. It’s my bachelorette party, right? What happens at a bachelorette party stays at a bachelorette party.”
She shook her head, not looking at me but down into the murky deep of the swamp, and I’d never been so disappointed to call Emory my sister as I was when she sat there telling me she’d let my brother beg and burn and burrow all ’cause she couldn’t accept that she didn’t want him.
“I’ll tell him,” I said.
She looked up at me and I saw hate in her eyes. I could match it, though. I could make her cower and she knew it. “He won’t care. He thinks two girls making out is hot. He told me.”
Emory wasn’t backing down. I thought about tackling her, about scratching at her skin till she agreed to break things off with Jayden, but then I remembered who Emory was. Despite all she tried to make people believe about her, she was always gonna be a fragile thing, someone who responded better to pity and apology than she ever did to the firm truth.
“Fine,” I said. “I won’t tell him. But I think you should.”
We heard the slosh of footsteps in mud and turned to see Adela slowly making her way down toward us, leaning back to support the dragging weight of her belly.
“We’ve been looking for you guys,” she said, huffing as she walked. I remembered the feeling of not enough space inside me to breathe and for a moment, I missed it.
“We was just talking,” I said. “You have something you wanna tell Em?”
Adela looked at me, confused, and then remembered. She took the bag off her shoulder and reached out, passing it to me. I passed it to Emory.
“Open it.”
Emory opened it, looked inside, and her forehead stretched and wiggled. “Why do you want me to have all y’all’s phones?”
“No, not that,” Adela said. “The envelope.”
Emory reached into the bag and pulled out a thick envelope. She peeked inside and then quickly closed it, stuffing it back into the bag.
“What is this? Are you trying to pay me not to marry Jay?”
Adela shook her head. “No, no, that’s not what it’s for.”
When Emory looked at Adela, there was still raw grief on her face. “What’s it for, then?”
“You.” Adela smiled again, happy with herself. “For whatever you want to do. We all agreed we wanted you to have options, so this is all the money from the jungle juice. We know you don’t have much to fall back on since your grandparents kicked you out, so we thought maybe this would help. As a gift.”
“A gift?”
She nodded. “Call it a graduation gift, even a wedding present. If that’s what you want.”
“But when you deciding what you want to do, I want you to remember what it felt like, up there.” I nodded toward the shack and the sound of unhampered delight. “We don’t get a lotta moments when we get to forget ourselves, shed every sullied idea of what we are, and just be. You young, Em. You can be alive, however you wanna be alive. You can float and dance and kiss whoever you want, as long as you keep your baby safe and happy. Marry Jayden if you want. But only if you woulda done that anyway, without all that’s happened this year, without Adela or Kai or nothing else. Okay?”
Emory stared into the bag, into the swamp, into the sphere of Adela’s stomach. “Okay.”